Even when, “nothing is new under the sun” (Eccl. 1, 9) “There may be other knowledges to acquire, other questions to consider, starting, not from that what others have known, but from what they have ignored” (MOSCOVICI) by choice or by chance, that...
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Even when, “nothing is new under the sun” (Eccl. 1, 9) “There may be other knowledges to acquire, other questions to consider, starting, not from that what others have known, but from what they have ignored” (MOSCOVICI) by choice or by chance, that is not relevant, the question is thinking about something un-thought at the moment. That is the hazardous passion developed here and you are invited to share it.
NEGOTIATING with LOGICAL-LINGUISTIC PROTOCOLS in a DIALOGICAL FRAMEWORK is the result of years of reflection. Some time ago, working in commodities we could feel how difficult it was to decide the order of the arguments used during the negotiation process. As in a Bridge game, we translated the arguments according to the rules of Bridge and saw how it worked to deal with them as in a Bridge hand, playing them and seeing what would happen. The results were impressive. We were thrilled about the potential for improvement on the negotiation process. We decided to investigate deeper on the possibility to undertake negotiations applying Bridge rules to organize the order of arguments. This was the subject of a previous paper (2011): The BRIDGE. A bridge TOWARD NEGOTIATIONS . It was the first formal attempt to establish a protocol to know the best order to use the arguments during the negotiation process, by converting them into cards and play a Bridge hand. However, as will be shown later, the study revealed some limitations. This subsequent work is an attempt to reduce these limitations. The new work should be more scientific and precise, so the decision was taken to start a PhD in Logic as the best framework and tool to develop a research on this subject. Following this path, the idea of turning arguments into cards to play a Bridge hand expanded progressively and went one step ahead just exploring: players, cards, deals and the information hidden in the player’s announcements and in the cards and/or in the deals. This new angle brought the research to the neurolinguistics patterns –NLP- and cryptic languages, like Russian Cards (van DITMARSCH, 2008).
Finally this PhD thesis is an attempt to think how to create logical dialogues to tackle negotiations, meaning: solving conflicts from basic linguistic structures (conjunctions; disjunctions; conditionals) placed under a dialogue form as a cognitive system which ‘understands’ natural language and where there is a permanent feed-back between both.
This paper aims to show and to share just a path, not a conquered territory, to negotiate in a dialogical framework and remain always open to any possible improvement. It will be like a ‘tragedy’ in three ‘acts’. Each ‘Act’ will be a ‘conceptual mimesis’ of the arguments used during the negotiation process to produce a ‘catharsis’, an improvement on the negotiation process. The three ‘acts’ have a spiral form, the first one is the Bridge, the second the Neuro-Linguistic Patterns (hereunder, NLP) and the third is the cryptic language Russian Cards. Therefore, the procedure of this thesis will be to study each part in accordance with its contribution and its limitations. Step by step our task will be to address ourselves to the limitations with the aim to reduce of them. Conclusions will be just to show a possible map, a guide to choose the order of arguments in negotiations.
The structure of each ‘Act’, as a step of this path, will be:
1. A presentation on the appropriateness and accommodation of the specific subject in the whole of the research.
2. Application to prepare negotiations.
3. Lights and shadows, or some interesting considerations to keep in mind for planning negotiations. The case chosen for study as a model for this ‘experiment’ is the 1st Camp David Accords. And exhaustive and aseptic analysis of these Accords can be found in the annex in order to have available the experimental frame. In order to preserve the rigour and the aseptic nature of this research we do not apply any framework that will be applied later, so you will not find any application of the Game Theory, neither NLP nor dialogical semantics used across this analysis of the 1st Camp David Accords. Preliminary research work was done on this negotiation as mentioned above. The same subject was chosen to give continuity to the started investigation. That was the reason, and not the idea that this theory is only applicable to international negotiations. This theory is for negotiations, whatever they are.
The methodology has been that one is appropriate in Logic: many paper reflections, thought drafts, therefore not included here because as drafts they do not have a decisive character for the final thesis; specific sources such as: manuals, books, articles and documents about the different subjects tackled along of this paper; and personal reflection comparing the distinct results and information. The purpose of working with specific sources has been to be as rigorous as possible while opening a new theoretical way into negotiation analysis and also into applied logic. One of the difficulties of opening a new way, no matter how fascinating it may be, is that no sources exist while it is being built. As you know, the instrumental nature of logic was recognised as early as the Organonby Aristotle. In fact, logic has been a tool for philosophical studies since Aristotle, even when many logicians see logic only as a family of formal systems. Logic is not applied to philosophical problems as an engineer may apply some techniques. Nevertheless, many logical notions transcend the particular formal systems and logic can offer there a rigorous language -with precise meanings- to study philosophical discourses and discourses in social and human sciences. Moreover, it is a great help for enhancing precision in communications. So, modern logic deals with a wide range of intelligent interactions across academic disciplines: from humanities to natural sciences. This dynamic turn involves the logical dynamics (dialogues as a form of reasoning; dialogical logic; study of knowledge; communication process; etc.). In this sense, van Benthen was clever saying:
Logical dynamics is a way of doing logic, but is also a general stance. Making actions, events, and procedures first-class citizens enriches the ways in which logic interacts with philosophy, and it provides a fresh look at many traditional themes. Looking at logic and philosophy over the last century, key topics like quantification, knowledge, or conditionality have had a natural evolution that went back and forth across disciplines. They often moved from philosophy to linguistics, mathematics, computer science, or economics (…). (van BENTHEN, J., 2011: 268).
Thus, there is an arsenal of fields to apply logic. Thank you for your understanding along this path of applied logic on a new field: negotiations.
Therefore, this work consists of a creative and an innovative effort full of risks. The experiment will confirm whether that innovation and risk were worthy and the reader will judge on the degree of accommodation.
In the following pages you will discover a new opportunity to apply the logical dialogues to deal with negotiations, to solve conflicts (as objective application) and even to serve peace (as a subjective option, since tools do not have an ethical value in themselves).
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